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Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory
89
368 pages, Paperback
First published October 21, 1993
About the author
Michael Warner
34 books46 followersMichael Warner is Seymour H. Knox Professor of English and American Studies at Yale, and chair of the department of English. His books include Publics and Counterpublics (2002); The Trouble with Normal (1999); and The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). With Craig Calhoun and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, he has edited Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2010). He is also the editor of The Portable Walt Whitman (New York: Penguin, 2003); American Sermons (New York: Library of America, 1999); The English Literatures of America (with Myra Jehlen); and Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (1993).
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 3, 2016
I quite enjoyed the cultural theory in this book, yet I found it to be entertaining at most. The grotesque rejection of any marxist or class analysis of gender / sexuality left a bad impression on me. I feel like Queer theory cannot loom into itself and become its own school of thought, it must ground itself further into feminist and marxist thought rather than try to escape it.
June 18, 2023
Brilliant foundational text of queer theory. Essentially required reading for any politically active individual.
June 20, 2021
Makes some interesting and challenging points. Is marred a bit by being from the 1990s and too caught up in postmodern thought. I think postmodernism was a big step backward. It is understandable that after the many defeats of the left and the left's political retreat to academia but the postmodern analysis is baroque as it is ineffective. Issues of queer identity are important but it is too wrapped up in Postmodernist jargon to be easily communicated which is the point.
January 25, 2018
A shockingly relevant (albeit uneven) collection of essays summarizing the state of queer theory in the early 1990s. Standouts include Steven Seidman's "Identity and Politics in a 'Postmodern' Gay Culture" and Lauren Berlant & Elizabeth Freeman's "Queer Nationality."
October 28, 2020
Warner's introduction is the highlight of this collection of okay essays.
April 5, 2021
skimmed through it more than read it but 🤷♀️
January 7, 2021
A dense read that I quite enjoyed, especially the cultural theory in this book, yet I found it to be entertaining at most. The grotesque rejection of any class analysis of gender/sexuality left a bad impression on me.
June 8, 2015
i'm not really sure i got a whole lot from this collection of essays in that it didn't broaden my horizons or challenge the way i think about things. i imagine it was pretty groundbreaking in 1993, but read today, a lot of the evisceration of popular theory (particularly in the fuss and sedgwick essays) is just tremendously satisfying and laugh out loud funny. the extent to which professionals tried to explain away any not straight/cis sexuality/gender expression is so bizarre and overwrought, relies on so much circular logic, and is just so blatantly biased that to a modern reader it reads like some sick elaborate joke. some of the essays were a real slug to get through, some of the work is dated. it's hard to rate. 3 stars is "liked it" and i guess that kind of covers the general feeling i had when i put the book down.
August 29, 2008
groundbreaking at the time of it's initial publication, I still have to say that essays such as Eve Sedgewick Kosofsky's "How to bring your kids up gay" systematically turning on it's head the argument that homosexuality is caused by patterns in parenting not only is thought provoking(particular at the time this book was published) but is hilarious as well lampooning and simultaneously deconstructing(perhaps exploding is a more accurate description) much theory on the etiology of homosexuality of the time.
April 15, 2007
very dense.
December 22, 2016
Ever wondered about homophobia. Wonder no more. Read this to get to the bottom of that homosexual anxiety.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews